There are seven stages to social media engagement from shallow monitoring to deep peer to peer economies. How deep is the rabbit hole of social media? Is your organisation doing the minimum they can do, or are they quite advanced? I put together this diagram to show the steps from shallow engagement such as just monitoring to full engagement including co-creating products and services. It’s probably worth noting that every baby steps stage in social media engagement is valid – from little acorns big ol’ oak trees grow

Stage Zero - What is Social Media?

Doesn’t know, doesn’t care about social media. What’s that FaceThing again? Probably doesn’t give laptops or mobile phones to staff. Had a website once but it cost nearly a thousand bucks a year to run so dropped it. The phone has always been good enough and typewriter ribbons are expensive now!

Stage One – Internal and Enterprise approach to Social Media

Social Media means “waste of time” – Facebook and Twitter are blocked at the firewall because we don’t want people wasting time on social networks, even on their lunch break. LinkedIn is blocked because someone mentioned someone once found a job on this online community. Youtube is only accessible via company mobile phones and only because IT didn’t realise everyone would get around the computer firewall blocks by using their mobiles.

There are staff guidelines and they start with Thou Shalt Not: thou shalt not leave a comment on a blog, thou shalt not use social sites in company time, thou shalt not talk to customers or the Press directly, thou shalt have everything approved by Public Relations, thou shalt not mention the company on Twitter, Facebook or Dogbook.

There are plans to set up an internal blog, wiki, collaborative knowledge management system, Yammer. And the CEO would quite like an iPhone app. One day.

Stage Two: Social Media Monitoring and Eavesdropping

At this point, the company has confused listening with engaging. Consultants are brought in to run workshops (yay!), money is invested in social media monitoring tools, and the company gathers more and more reports, that are longer and larger, with analytics, graphs, numbers, statistics and hints of “further actions” regarding keywords, searches, and sentiment of their Brand, products and services. The listening is done at arms length and there is no intention to address any of the issues being discussed. The online community is unaware they are being listened to, and couldn’t care less if they were.

Stage Three: Social Media as a Broadcast- Out medium

The company has decided that our DVDs aren’t really the thing so why not put them up online communities? Stilted interviews with the CEO, niche tech announcements and the latest coolest TV ad that cost us a fortune should all be up on YouTube. Turn off or ignore comments, and embeds, because YouTube is really just full of snarky negative types. Doesn’t even realise YouTube has a backend analytics program but is mildly happy when the videos hit 100 views after six months.

Stage Four: Social Media is for Viral distribution

Eventually plonks some money down for a “viral” video because that seems to work as good as TV these days in delivering eyeballs. Agency created content, agency distributed content. The only thing the social network has to do is distribute it. Make it quirky, rude or NSFW and it will be passed around. No feedback from the community comes back to the company except the number of people who “shared”, favourited or “liked” the viral photo, video or app. The role of the community is to forward on the material, but ssshhh! silently please.

Stage Five: Social Media Campaigns

The company has decided to risk engaging with the customer and will “give it a try”. For 6 weeks, they will build up a Facebook Page, a Twitter account and so on. It will usually revolve around a competition or event or “short term” strategy and at the end of six weeks it’s over. Unfortunately the Facebook Page and Twitter account were named after the campaign not the company or product so everything gets deleted including a few thousand Twitter follower connections and the Facebook content. The community members decide next time not to bother joining that Page and the internet is littered with social media accounts with solid connections not being used.

Coles signed up over 3000 on this Twitter account then threw them away in September 2009 (last update). Did you know you can rename Twitter accounts if you are unhappy with the name you originally chose? @colesonline has only 2600 followers so I guess they’ve spent the last 2 years diligently building up the numbers again?

Stage 6: Collaborative Social Media

The Brand is still managing and manipulating the media but the responses are more two way. So the Company puts out a request – please help us design a product, please tell us how we can do XYZ better, please create an advertisement for us. The impetus may not have arisen out of the social network (it probably came from the marketing department) but it’s thrown open to the online community. Or the idea came from the community but the company decided how to structure and monitor the responses. They then gave “permission” for the community to create content around those ideas.

Stage 7: People Powered Social Media

Imagine a bank where the person wanting a loan puts up the request and the community analyses and responds with the interest rate and a couple of thousand members put up a dollar or two each. How much is the bank involved with producing the products and services? Or are they simply providing the social space for online community commerce to continue? That is what Prosper, Zopa et al do. Imagine something similar for dress makers and designers and jewellers to create and transact in their vertical. That’s etsy. Artists? Redbubble. Imagine a recruitment company that allowed members to put up a job and for other members to bid on it. That’s Freelancer.com, Guru.com, elance.com You get the idea. Put up the platform then stand back and let the community do commerce. You get a clip of every sale and solve some tough problems for them (including matchmaking the one with the need to the one with the solution).

Is your company ready for Stage 7? Is your industry ready for Stage 7?

What do you think? Which stage is your company at? Am I missing any stages?

Great rabbit hole Laurel,
Based on my experience with clients, Social Media Monitoring and Eavesdropping (referred to as Stage 2) is rarely brought up. The typical scenario I face with clients sounds something like this “give some of that Facebook stuff, and flipper or Twitter or whatever you guys call it, and yes that thing that has videos … what was that called again” – so basically, they’ve heard about social media, they have no idea why they should get on it, but they know they have to because it’s shiny and new … they expect miracles, and they expects it instantly! They think Facebook likes are an indication of a successful engagement – so you can forget about interaction monitoring, or tonality, or any other measurements. All they care about is number of likes, number of followers, number of views on Youtube.
So i guess we need to develop a slightly different diagram for this part of the world
Thanks for sharing Laurel,
with respects,
John

I really enjoyed this. I’m a marketing consultant and this is a great post to point clients to sensitively inform them where they are on the scale of social media adoption.

As of late, there hasn’t been a problem getting clients to get their feet wet and try some of this stuff out. But this time last year I still found quite a few wanted to jump strait into ‘viral’ with a quirky video. I think there’s more appreciation now that there needs to be a strategy in place and someone other than admin manning the fort.

Is it just me BUT does anybody else feel this analogy is a tad cynical ? Perhaps the post should be renamed “Pitfalls to avoid along the path to social media adoption?
I think to get a true picture you have to look at social media on on how it integrates with business throughout the organisation . Another stage to perhaps add is when businesses finally realize that social media is not just campaign based and commits to adopting social on an going basis across its organisation inside and outside out and moves into social across other areas of its business such as customer service and offline events to drive engagement and sales.
Another great model i have also found useful is Jake Mckee’s ‘ social engagement journey’ http://bit.ly/gHU3um
Thanks for the post definitely got me thinking ..

Hey David, I hope not toooo cyncial I did mention that these are valid baby steps.

I see Stage 6, Collaboration, as being “whole of company” approach. In my courses I outline 12 steps of social enterprise engagement under Stage 6 – and you are quite right, social media short term campaigns is only one of those steps.

Nice breakdown. I particularly like the use of entirely plausible examples.

Interesting to see the applicability spectrum, too. E.g. the levels would apply a lot more accurately to larger businesses, but a tech startup, for example, would likely start at Stage 2, and even kinda Stage 7, if that relates to what their business does.

Granted, given that many tech firms are “geek-centric”, the companies need to reach a certain maturity before they get the resources and skills on board to go a good job of things like Stage 5.

I think most businesses actually do engage in step 2 by monitoring what’s being said about them on sites like Yelp and Google places and when the negatives outweigh the positives they will get into reputation management mode. Stage 7 doesn’t apply to all businesses because not all are set up to connect individuals with specific services. At my agency we’ve coverd stages 1-5.

wonderful article. Thank you for the post, I manage a site based on entertainment and celebrity trends and everything viral, so social media is one of the most important factors in getting the word out. It’s nice to see the steps we need to take in order to truly engage with our readers. We are constantly learning at Trendrabbit that the Rabbit hole goes very deep indeed when it comes to social media. Looking forward to your future posts.

Excellent article, It’s nice to see the steps we need to take in order to truly engage with our readers. I manage a site based on entertainment and celebrity trends and everything viral, so social media is one of the most important factors in getting the word out.

Thankfully, a number of my campaigns have already reached level 7. However, I’d like to say that a huge part of their success was because my clients had also been cooperative with me. They listened to my inputs, trusted me, and asked questions or suggestions whenever they didn’t know what to do next. They too deserve the credit.

I’m glad I stumbled on to this post. The recent Google (Panda and Penguin) updates have had my sites depending more and more on social networking for traffic. It’s time to print out the 7 steps and start marching down this rabbit hole. Great info

It feels odd posting a comment on a post from 18 months ago, and where the previous comment is from 4 months ago. But I arrived here via a link tweeted today, the post is still very relevant, so let’s do what feels natural as a first shot.

The piece is still 9x% relevant in spite of what we are told about the breakneck pace of change in Social Media. It’s also really useful. Not in a damn-with-faint-praise sense of ‘useful’, like ‘interesting’. But useful as in – you can do something practical with it right now, in spite of it’s brevity and simplicity, something that I happen to need to do today… like the way the cuticle-pusher-thing I picked up yesterday was the only way to get into my GalaxySII ;0) So comment 1 = “Thanks!”.

A few thoughts to add.

I think there’s a good version of the listening stage. I regularly advise people who are falling over themselves to do something [e.g. in Broadcast Out mode] to listen… and then to listen some more. But it has to be listening with a view to engaging. Not listening simply to collect passive data. I ask companies to listen to what is being said, where, by who, and how [language,purpose etc] not just about them [the Brand] but about the things they are interested in or care about. [The bi-product is that it makes them check whether there *are* things which *as a company* they care about or are interested in… whether they are the sort of company that can have a view… and how it gets to exist… possibly even leading to enlightenment about *internal* Social Media]. THEN they can decide whether/how/why to join in.

I think your progression highlights two chasms that organisations need to cross if they want to get to a good Social Media place.The first is either between 4 and 5 or between 5 and 6. It depends on how the campaigns are conducted, whether they are part of an evolution… or whether they are dead-ends which simply treat Social Media platforms as a kind of comms infrastructure. This gap is about becoming naturally and habitually two-way. [All the exhortations around a full understanding of 2.0-ness still apply here]. This goes along with recognising that engagement *means* 2-way-ness, and applies to many company needs/functions besides ‘Comms’.

The other one is between 6 and 7. But I’m not sure if it’s a gap or a potential fork… or even a Stage 6.5 which can be sustained indefinitely. Your Stage 7 examples look like cases where social now *is* the business – a new type of business. Whereas I think there’s another state, or a fork in the road, where companies whose products and services simply can’t be transformed in that way, can nonetheless become much more radically social [in their online engagement] than the good practice state you describe at 6.

I need to think further about that – and look deeper into your examples – for which another ‘thanks’ for inspiration. But I’d be interested in your take on my initial reaction.

Alot of times, companies didnt’ really listen to the buzz before jumping in. If FMCG brands are on Facebook, it doesn’t mean that a B2B co should be on Facebook. Listening to the community is essential when moving from one stage to another. Alot of companies make the mistake of blindly sending out content, thinking that it will be relevant to their audience without checking where the community is heading.

Thanks. Touches the idea of where best/how best to utilize the crowd mind for #HeForShe.For example, can goals be acquired through the crowd? Not voted for, but rather through engagement. Can the Crowd show, rather than tell what is primary? #AmThinking #amWriting Thanks again.

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Laurel Papworth connects with just over 1,000,000 people a week, educating on social media, online communities and the digital economy. She connects with 7,000 a week on her blog, and has around 50,000 followers on Twitter and 42,000 on Google Plus. Laurel's live keynotes, presentations and workshops on social media reach 10,000 businesses a year.